More scenes from Bonnaroo: Dave Matthews, Regina Spektor, John Fogerty, Rise Against

Imagine you're at Coachella. It's now Day 3 of a particularly sweltering weekend in the desert, so you're in the homestretch. There's still fun to be had, but your painful sunburn and collection of foot blisters make you grateful that a comfy bed and a long shower is only a day away.

Now imagine the same scenario, with a few additions. Kick up the humidity to a shirt-plastering 90 percent. Tack on four additional hours of life-changing performances each night. Visualize yourself -- eyes drooping, feet aching, dirt building up in crevices you never you knew you had -- wading through more than 75,000 equally soiled bodies to get to the next show on time.

Despite how many 'Roos I've attended (this is the fourth), there was no way I could have prepared for the extreme fatigue I felt when I woke in my oven-of-a-tent Saturday morning after bouncing between 11 bands on four different stages the previous day.

But Bonnaroo had once again laid out some of the most solid scheduling of the past few years. Just thinking about Saturday's superb late-afternoon lineup -- up-and-coming Brits Mumford & Sons followed by stellar back-to-back performances from the Dead Weather, Weezer, Stevie Wonder and Jay-Z, plus a nightcap from the ever-dynamic Thievery Corporation -- infused me with enough adrenaline to gather my gear and once again brave Manchester's unforgiving elements.

Let it be known: if you haven't yet seen and heard Mumford & Sons, you are missing out on some of the most serene folk forays and intensely dynamic pub jams to grace U.S. soil in recent memory. For these four talented Englishmen, Bonnaroo marked their first appearance ever in Tennessee -- an auspicious beginning for my inevitable ascension to euphoria as the day's star-studded schedule unfolded.

That said, I'll grant that many attendees got their much-needed third-day energy boost during the following explosion from Jack White's latest behemoth of a band, the Dead Weather, on What Stage, fittingly preceded by the weekend's only brief rain shower. Full of his usual bravado, White capitalized on the elemental coincidence, quipping “I don't want you to forget which band brought you the rain tonight … I called three weeks ahead for that.”

The Nashville-based pseudo-supergroup -- fronted by the Kills' Alison Mosshart (pictured) and filled out by former Raconteurs bassist Jack Lawrence and onetime Queens of the Stone Age multi-instrumentalist Dean Fertita -- began its set almost exactly like its nefariously charged Coachella show: kicking off with a distortion-driven cover of Pentagram's “Forever My Queen” ... easing into two Mosshart-led kickers, “60 Feet Tall” and “Hang You from the Heavens,” both from their debut, Horehound ... before swapping White as vocalist on the group's staple cover of Van Morrison's “You Just Can't Win.”

Yet those who copped out early to catch Weezer start to finish (the two bands overlapped by 30 minutes) should be kicking themselves. Not only did the Dead Weather treat the audience to more than half of its latest, bone-shaking record, Sea of Cowards, but never have I seen White shred with such ferocious abandon as he did during the chill-inducing ballad “Will There Be Enough Water” and the blues-oozing new track “I Can't Hear You.” The only memory-seared moment that compares for me is his 2008 Bonnaroo performance of “Blue Veins” with the Raconteurs, when he keeled over, Spinal Tap-style, onto a front-stage monitor, still soloing like a madman.

Of course, many people surely wanted to save some leg strength for Weezer's dance-heavy set, which -- thanks to key Raditude tracks like “Can't Stop Partying” and the band's popular rendition of MGMT's “Kids” -- induced frontman Rivers Cuomo into such frequent flurries of frolicking, jumping and sprinting, he literally elapsed his breath before the second verse of the fan favorite “Pork & Beans,” gasping at guitarist Brian Bell: “You sing it!”

Big kudos to Cuomo, who I daresay may have outperformed Jay-Z, although I'm sure Hova fans still basking in the revelry of a once-in-a-lifetime back-to-back extravaganza begun by Stevie Wonder -- in a set punched up by “Higher Ground,” “Superstition” and a funk-tinged cover of Marvin Gaye's “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” -- would strongly disagree with that assessment.

After ending Saturday with an intimate bash featuring Thievery Corporation at That Tent (comparable in size to Coachella's Mojave Tent) that ran until nearly 3 a.m., I was prepared to take Sunday -- the final day -- at a slower pace. My tormented body was begging me for a break.

Yet, in the face of complete collapse, the undying spirit of first-rate rock 'n' roll once again revived me and my fellow sun-battered fest friends at Bonnaroo. Anyone who denies the enlivening auras of the afternoon's acts -- the still-youthful energy of Southern rock kingpin John Fogerty, the primal punk power of Dropkick Murphys, the frenetic force of Chicago riot-starters Rise Against – was likely taking a not-entirely-justifiable snooze in the grass.

Then again, many people probably reserved their final iotas of vitality for Dave Matthews Band, who like so many other artists over the course of this weekend wrapped their jam-friendly set with a pair of choice covers: a rendition of Neil Young's “The Needle and the Damage Done” with Matthews alone on guitar, followed by a full-band finale of Bob Dylan's “All Along the Watchtower.”

There are many annual multi-day fests that regulate the beat of my musical heart, but Bonnaroo truly is the defibrillator that resets the rhythm of my life, always giving me something monumental to reflect on until next year. Conceivably it's the extended set times that get me so jazzed, or maybe it's the overpowering communal catharsis that results from the majority of patrons camping out together for four full days, sharing every moment of physical pain and instance of bliss that makes it worth it ... until the final notes dissolve.

Conan O'Brien perhaps best summed up the overarching feeling during his introduction of the Dead Weather Saturday evening: “[Other] festivals wanted me … but I said, ‘Noooooooooo!' I told 'em: I want BONNAROO!”

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